


Well, There's Nothing Like A Good Book Burning...

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: Mal's Collected Drabbles [5]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 15:05:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12707388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: In answer to a Give Me A Prompt challenge,For lj user bandit_genrou, prompt: CrowlyxAziraphale, "Well, there's nothing like a good book burning..."





	Well, There's Nothing Like A Good Book Burning...

**Author's Note:**

> In answer to a Give Me A Prompt challenge,  
> For lj user bandit_genrou, prompt: CrowlyxAziraphale, "Well, there's nothing like a good book burning..."

"I'm moving to England," Aziraphale declared, as unhappy as a wet hen in a downpour. 

"Why?" Crowley watched a burst of flame from the bonfire of books arc up clear to the rafters around the plaza. It was kind of pretty against the night sky. "I thought you liked Germany."

"Not anymore."

"They invented the printing press." Crowley knew that scored ten thousand points on Aziraphale's personal scoreboard. The angel had stayed ensconced in the Rhine valley for over a hundred years, all the way to the late 1500s, letting the whole messy Lutheran revolution thing wash around him unheeded as he happily trebled his collection of illuminated manuscripts with printed additions.

"How about France?" Crowley said, wiping some ash off his nose. "I hear the cooking's a lot better than-"

"Paris. 1790. When they abolished the church. Burnt all my first edition bibles."

Oh yeah. There'd been a time when Aziraphale had bookstores all over Europe, but over the centuries, humans had...well, acted like humans. Crowley wished he could take credit for it; for this bonfire illuminating the sky in Mainz in 1937 and all the other fires before that. But the really sad - and almost frightening - thing was that he and his side hadn't had all that much to do with it at all. 

"I don't see why you think England will be any better," he eventually said as the crowd around the bonfire hooted and laughed and sang really boring songs with a lot of thumping refrains. "They were burning books in Manchester just the other day."

"The other _day_?"

"Other century. Luddites. They were burning manuals on physics and engineering- it was only a hundred and twenty years ago." When one had been around as long as the pair of them had, that really was the other day.

There was nothing but a mournful silence for answer. 

"Okay, England." There was no doubt that Crowley would be moving that way soon as well. After all, he and Aziraphale were enemies, Crowley had to keep an eye on him and make sure his opposite number did nothing more ominous than found yet another bookstore where a demon could cage a good meal, a warm, comfy bed and acceptable company during those dull decades where the humans stopped thumping on each other.

Aziraphale sighed dolefully as some enthusiastic kid, who aught to be in school getting his hide tanned by his teacher, dumped another load of books onto the fire. Crowley stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and decided not to wait too long before admitting to the angel that he'd done something underhand and devious and illegal, stealing all of Aziraphale's priceless books on the cabala and Jewish history right out of the crates the enthusiastic crowd were hauling, and replacing them with five thousand copies of Mein Kampf (he'd be denouncing the whole lot of them to the Reich's police in the morning, or maybe even the recently formed Schutzstaffel who were a whole lot worse, because that was full of evil irony and that's what Crowley _did_ ).


End file.
